I ALWAYS SEEM TO WATCH YOU FROM AFAR
On evening where sheets of rooks whirl
like cyclones of flapping ash,
through the dark afternoon window
where I see the shell of a blue star.
I watch you from afar
time beating like an impatient monster in motion,
our day became fitted hours of paid banality,
yet I always seem to watch you leave but never
arrive.
When I heard the wind carry its voice
from cordial gutter to napkin fields of snow,
where horses ran in triangles of untouched lavender
did I see an image of you walking away.
If I could stop time and its deathly ruin
and pause just an hour in your arms
I would see the true wonderment in love
its necessities and beauty in flourishing threads of time.
Yet I always seem to watch you from afar
either leaving or sleeping beside me deep in dream,
passing me in the hallway at night
like a familiar stranger on a returning train.
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NOTES ON MEETING MY YOUNGER SELF
I watched him without interruption
my naïve and arrogant imitator,
a lying master to all assumptions
you see that boy I’m now his narrator.
I saw smudged swans drift in a river
with familiar figures I’d almost forgot,
wanting to question them before time withers
and fading seconds of youth stop.
Yet these cobbled streets held my memory
like a dark star holds the canvas to our sky,
when once best friends became the enemy
the boy started to look through a man’s eyes.
© Matthew J. Duggan
photo©Stratos Fountoulis
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bio
Matthew J. Duggan has published in many poetry magazines such as Dwang 2, Seventh Quarry, Carillon, Monkey Kettle, Littoral press, Chimera, Magpie’s Nest, The Ugly Tree, Connections, Square (On a CD ), M:/P Mag, Krax, and many more.
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